In an April 23 Times Online article good friend of the Waist High program Richard Evans says Hollywood is remaking the eighties because we are talking about deeply felt cultural patterns.
"The fortysomething Evans describes a virtuous circle in which current trends in music, movies and fashion that feed off the Eighties drive people back to that decade and ultimately reinforce their appetite for that culture. 'You listen to the Kaiser Chiefs and they have a bit of Talking Heads in them,' he says. 'And that drives you back to Talking Heads. Modern culture drives the whole Eighties nostalgia wave, where you see nine-year-old kids on the high street wearing ra-ra skirts, and you see Eighties typography creeping back into magazines, and so on. It's almost impossible to release yourself from the pull of this nostalgia.'"
But how long can we keep returning to our inner Eighties kids? Samuel Bayer, director of the Nightmare on Elm Street remake, suggests: "We've just got to wait a couple of years and the Nineties will be really hot. Then suddenly we'll be looking back at some godawful films from the early Nineties and considering them classics and remaking them."
But Evans is not so sure. The Eighties have been built to last, he says. "The decade won't always be quite as influential as it is now. But as long as my generation is around it will be looking backwards to those times. I suppose every generation says that. But my generation will say that until it is no more."
Photo: Rob McEwan/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. via KSSU
